The Frontline documentary “Two American Families: 1991-2024,” arriving on Tuesday, follows two Milwaukee families, one Black, one white, over the last 30-odd years. “Families” is intimate and dignified, unwavering but gentle. At a time when so much documentary television feels generic, disposable and even straightforwardly pointless, this is both a master work unto itself and a glaring reminder of what is largely absent in television narrative nonfiction.
“Families” is the fifth installment in the tales of the Stanley and Neumann families, a long-term portrait series produced and directed by Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes, with interviews and narration by Bill Moyers. The specials began with “Minimum Wages: The New Economy” in 1992, after the breadwinners of each family were laid off from union manufacturing jobs. (This newest entry covers the full timeline and does not require previous familiarity.
) Since then, neither family has ever truly recovered, despite ceaseless — ceaseless — hard work, as the parents, and eventually their children, all struggle to find their way into the middle class. Faith is a huge theme here, with each family turning to religious practice as a respite from suffering and as reservoir of hope. In one scene, the white family, the Neumanns, stand on the altar as their priest thanks God for providing the dad with an $8-per-hour nonunion job with no benefits.
Even that job doesn’t last. Prayers and preaching weave through the decades, gratitude for the riches ostensibly to come. “Families” intercuts moments of everyday strain with Inaugural Addresses going back to Bill Clinton, in which each president promises jobs, jobs and more jobs, and each declares the American economy to be growing and glorious.
And yet. “Despite all the hard work, these two American families had barely survived one of the most prosperous decades in our history,” Moyers narrates. And that’s barely at the halfway point in the story.
The latest installment is available Tuesday on the PBS app and and airs on PBS that night at 10 p.m. (Check local listings.
) “Two American Families” reminds me a lot of the 1998 series also a Frontline documentary. That’s available on the , and it’s one of the most memorable and powerful documentaries I’ve ever seen..
